The surrounding countries were making troubles, but the Chu State was focusing on internal affairs alone and ignored the storms from the outside world.
After the beginning of spring, the winter wind and snow quickly subsided, and the terrible white natural disaster seemed to become a memory, quickly forgotten by people who were welcoming the New Year.
The new year has arrived, and people who have been stuck at home all winter have to start their own busy work in this new year.
Farmers began to sow and raise seedlings, city residents also began to look for work in various workshops or shops, and business travelers began to travel between cities with their goods.
Everyone in the Chu court also began to work hard on the strategy formulated last year.
The first place to start was naturally the many mines in Qianzhong County.
Money is the first of all industries. No matter what you do, the first and most important thing is to have money.
Therefore, after the New Year's Day, when all the ministries in the court resumed their duties, Lu Yuan summoned many ministers. After discussing with them, he sent an imperial envoy to lead people to Qianzhong County and began to handle many mining affairs in this county.
As for the many manpower and materials needed for mining, the local government of Qianzhong County and many barbarian prisoners of war temporarily under the jurisdiction of the Forbidden Army were specially ordered to provide them.
With all these supports and arrangements, plus the fact that the imperial envoy who went to handle the matter is a capable person, I think it won't be long before good news comes from Qianzhong County.
The money bag matter is almost settled like this.
However, money and food, money and food, money and food have always gone hand in hand and are called together.
So after solving the money problem, the court also quickly dealt with the food problem.
The Chu State now has two major grain-producing areas, namely the Jianghan Plain where Xiangyang County is located, and the Dongting Plain where Dongting County is located.
These two plains are both located where rivers and lakes are irrigated. The land is fertile and they are first-class grain-producing areas.
Now these two places have been developed, and the remaining areas that have not yet been developed are also quite labor-intensive land.
Not only was it difficult to develop, but after it was finally developed, the grain yield was far less than the previous good land.
Therefore, Chu State, which is currently short of manpower, is naturally not very interested in these places that are difficult to develop.
In the future, when the population increases and land is scarce, we may be able to develop those lower-grade lands.
But now that Chu State is vast and sparsely populated, and there are good fields waiting to be developed everywhere, there is no need to waste precious manpower in such a place.
Therefore, for the Chu State, the current development of Dongting and Xiangyang counties has reached its limit, and there is no way or need to continue deeper development.
Therefore, if you want to increase grain production and expand grain bags, it is of little use to do this in these two counties. You have to go to other places.
And this place is naturally Xichuan County.
The Xichuan Plain owned by Xichuan County has no less potential than the Jianghan Plain and the Dongting Plain. If it can be developed, no, it has already been developed there. There is no need to put in more effort to open up wasteland. It should be said to be utilized.
As long as the existing Xichuan Plain can be utilized, within two years this will become another tax-rich land that produces tens of millions of stones.
At its peak, Xichuan County had a population of more than five million. The ability to feed so many people depended on the support of the Xichuan Plain.
Nowadays, Chu State does not have so many people to develop the entire Xichuan County.
But as long as it is initially developed and the many fertile fields on the Xichuan Plain are cultivated, the food produced will be enough to feed two to three million people.
Not only is it enough to feed the current population of Xichuan County, but it can also produce a large amount of food every year to supply the Chu army or trade with foreign countries.
In recent years, all countries in Kyushu have been at war with each other.
Perennial wars not only brought death, but also famine.
A large number of young and strong laborers were recruited to the battlefield. Naturally, without these people, local food production in various countries will decrease sharply.
Just like the Su State next to the Chu State.
Although this joint country that participated in the original joint alliance launched a war to conquer the southwestern barbarians, although it initially solved the problem of fiscal deficit, it also experienced extremely serious food shortages in the country due to the war.
To this day, even though the Soviet Union ended the war as early as the end of last year.
But until now, several months have passed, and the problem of food shortage in the Soviet Union has still not been solved.
In Suzhou, the price of grain has now soared to the level of 40 cents per pound of rice. A large number of people cannot afford to buy grain and rice. In order to survive, they have to sell off their family property and even sell their children and daughters, just to exchange for a mouthful of rice. .
More people fled to the mountains or simply fled to neighboring countries after they could no longer survive.
During this period of cold winter, the Soviet Union received tens of thousands more refugees from the Soviet Union.
In order to escape the hell in their hearts, these people of Su State even braved the terrible wind and snow last winter to trek thousands of miles to the border of Chu State.
According to the report received by Lu Yuan.
Last winter, a large-scale wave of exodus broke out in the Soviet Union.
More than 100,000 Soviet people participated in the escape.
The direction of escape included Chu State, Nanhai State, Song State, and even Dali, Kunhai and other countries.
Chu State is just one of the choices.
Of the more than 100,000 people who fled, at least 40,000 to 50,000 died on the way.
The snowstorm last winter was not so easy to endure. Especially driving in the wind and snow is even more fatal.
On the other hand, Su Wange, Su Xuange, was said to have become furious in the palace after learning the news that local people were fleeing. He punished several officials in a year.
Later, a large number of troops were sent to various prefectures and counties to capture fugitives.
Once discovered, they were punished on the spot, or even executed directly. The corpses were hung in various important roads to shock people.
However, such actions not only failed to stem the tide of fleeing, but instead made people everywhere more frightened, and more people fled because of fear.
Even some of the troops sent to hunt down the refugees, many fled with them.
Many of the people who fled were relatives of the Soviet army.
Now that his family members want to run away, can those Soviet troops still be ruthless and kill their relatives in a just act of justice?
Let’s not talk about whether Su Xuange has such a great personality charm, but even the treatment given to those troops by the Su State is not worth the price.
Forty cents per pound of rice was an unbearable weight for the Soviet army.
Many Soviet soldiers' families were almost unable to untie the pot because of the soaring food prices.
Under such circumstances, one cannot expect them to be very loyal to the Soviet Union.
And under this wave of fleeing waves, the country of Su State also appeared to be in turmoil, and the signs of national subjugation became more and more intense.
However, if Su State is going to fall, that is something Su Xuange should worry about.
For the Chu State and Lu Yuan, this was a good opportunity to make a lot of money.
A few years ago, the Su State attacked the southwestern Yi, but in the end they did not gain much in terms of territory. They only opened up one county and four prefectures, less than half a county.
But in terms of money, Su Guo's gains were huge.
Because it targeted the newly developed Tonghai County and the Yinsheng area of Dali that Su had led his troops to attack before.
The political policy adopted by Su Xuange was similar to Li Xiong's previous use in Xichuan County, which completely ignored the future and purely used plundering methods like fishing from the lake.
Specifically, regardless of high or low, regardless of region, regardless of life or death, wherever the Soviet army passed by, all the property, money and food of the local people were plundered.
This cruel method not only aroused a large number of barbarians to resist, but also helped the Soviet Union obtain a large amount of money and materials.
With the meager and impoverished national power of the Su State, it was able to maintain an army of more than 100,000 in the southwestern Yi region for several years because of this predatory and squeezing method.
Although they have been fighting for several years now, a lot of the money they plundered has been consumed.
But there should still be a lot of money left in Su Guo's hands.
Back then, Li Xiong was able to plunder hundreds of millions of taels of property in Xichuan County.
Although the barbarians in the southwestern region were quite barren and the Su State plundered only half a county, according to estimates, Su Xuange gained at least hundreds of millions of taels worth of property from this war.
Even if a lot of this money was consumed due to the war, the Soviet Union still has tens of millions of taels of silver left, which is already a huge sum of money.
Nowadays, Chu State needs money everywhere. Although according to the statistics from the Ministry of Revenue, Chu State will achieve a fiscal surplus in six years, with a surplus of 12 million taels of silver every year.
But that was only six years later.
The current state of Chu is still running a fiscal deficit. It needs to subsidize 10 million taels of silver from the national treasury every year. The gap is huge.
Although the current national treasury is enough to support the fiscal surplus in six years, Chu State's financial problems will not be too big.
These are possible because the existing conditions and environment of Chu State have remained unchanged, so that the current hole can be barely maintained.
If something happens during this period, the Chu State's current treasury reserves will be at risk of being unable to support it.
Therefore, being able to take advantage of this opportunity to make more money is naturally a great thing for Chu State.
The target of making money is naturally the country of Su, which is short of food.
The Su State was short of food but had money, and the Chu State was short of food but had no money. The two sides complemented each other perfectly.
Today, the main food suppliers in the Su Kingdom are the grain merchants from the Nanhai Kingdom.
Those greedy guys, in order to make money, have raised the price of food in Su country to the level of thirty cents per pound of rice now.
It can be said to suck out the bones and marrow, without any mercy.
Regarding this situation, Su State, and even Chu State and Song State, which had been cheated before, were filled with hatred.
That is to say, now, the Nanhai Kingdom is in a special situation, involving the game between Chu, Su and other countries and the Ning Kingdom. Lu Yuan and Su Xuange cannot teach the Nanhai Kingdom a lesson, which is why the other side is so proud.
But now, Chu, Song and other countries have ended their war against the southwestern barbarians. There is no huge army to consume food and grass, and Chu's food pressure has been greatly alleviated.
Naturally, the large amount of domestic grain can be saved, stored, or sold externally.
For the Chu State, which can now harvest a large amount of surplus grain every year and will soon develop the Xichuan Plain, as long as it does not encounter a large-scale disaster every year, the grain produced that year will be enough for its own consumption.
The so-called hoarding of food is not something that must be done when money is scarce today.
Therefore, it is more cost-effective for Chu State to exchange excess grain for money.
Regarding this matter, after discussing with the ministers, Lu Yuan has sent an envoy to Su State for preliminary communication.
Chu State is willing to sell excess grain to Su State at a price lower than the current "market price".
Well, after the price is reduced, it will be about ten coins per catty of rice, which is equivalent to one-third of the price of grain sold in Nanhai Kingdom.
Although this price is lower than the international market price, it is still a huge profit for Chu State.
Now that the war has stopped, the price of rice in Chu State, which had soared, has quickly fallen back to the normal price. From the original five cents per kilogram of rice, it has fallen back to the current three cents per kilogram of rice.
Therefore, even if the grain Chu State sells to Su State is only ten cents per catty of rice, it is still a net profit of more than 200%, which can be called a huge profit.
What the Chu State paid for this was just to collect and allocate a batch of rice from the country and then send it to the border of the Soviet Union. It didn't take much effort.
On the contrary, the sale of Chu State's low-priced grains can also give a severe blow to the arrogant grain merchants of Nanhai State, suppress their unscrupulous arrogance, and directly cut off their way to make a fortune.
I think coming to the Su State, after receiving the goodwill of the Chu State, they should also be happy to see this happen.
After all, it is better to buy food from those profiteers in the South China Sea who treat themselves as fat sheep to suck blood than to spend thirty cents per catty.
It is better to use only one-third of the price to buy grain from the Chu State with which he has always had an alliance.
Su Xuange had no reason to refuse this deal, whether it was on an economic or emotional level.
"There should be more than 1.5 million people in Su country now. These people are calculated on the basis that each person consumes one stone of food per month and consumes twelve stones of food per year.
A person's annual food consumption is almost thirteen taels of silver.
One and a half million people, that is a market of more than 20 million taels of silver.
Even if these markets are not fully occupied by the Chu State, the Su State will gradually become self-sufficient in food as the local area stabilizes and production recovers.
But in the years before stability, it should be easy for Chu State to earn ten million taels of silver from Su State every year. "
Lu Yuan made a calculation in his mind and couldn't help but feel very happy.
You can earn an extra ten million taels of silver every year, and this income can last for several years. No matter how you look at it, it is a happy thing.
"And not only the Su State, but also the Zhou State, you can actually try to start a grain business."
Now there are Tibetan people in the west of Zhou State, Wei people in the north, Liang people in the east, and Chu people in the south.
In these four directions, except that Chu State has now negotiated peace with Zhou State, it has maintained a peaceful state.
The remaining three directions are all enemies of Zhou.
Now the Zhou Kingdom deployed troops on three sides. In addition to the 100,000 troops and horses left behind in Guannei County and Hanzhong County, there were 900,000 soldiers and horses deployed on the battlefields in the other three directions.
If we include the civilian men who transported grain and fodder, and the militia and village warriors who were recruited, then the total number of Zhou's army would be close to more than two million.
Such a large-scale army is almost equivalent to one-tenth of the total population of Zhou State.
In other words, one of the ten people in the Zhou Kingdom was recruited to the frontline battlefield, and he was still a young and strong laborer.
Without so many young and strong laborers, problems will inevitably arise in Zhou's domestic production.
According to reports from the Imperial City Division, the price of food in the Zhou Kingdom has generally risen to five cents per catty of rice, and in some areas, it has even risen to ten cents per catty.
Food shortages caused by food shortages have begun to appear within the Zhou Kingdom.
Moreover, this kind of famine and the soaring price of food will continue to increase year by year as the Zhou Dynasty war continues.
If it cannot be controlled in time, the current Su State will be the next example for Zhou State.
Lu Yuan is naturally extremely interested in such a huge and emerging market.
However, although he was interested, he did not act immediately.
First, the war between Chu and Zhou had just ended, and the trust between the two parties was not enough. Even if they wanted to do business, they did not have the foundation for the time being.
Secondly, although Zhou State is currently experiencing a food famine, this famine is not serious and can be fully supported by Zhou State's foundation.
At this time, you can't make much money by selling grain to the other party. At most, you can earn some hard-earned money.
The third is that the Chu State does not have much food on hand now. It is already the limit to satisfy one Su State, and it cannot sell more grain to the Zhou State for the time being.
So considering these aspects, Lu Yuan chose to wait until the famine there became serious, and after several rounds of harvests, there was more food on his side, and then he would consider doing business with Zhou Guo.
For the sake of the two international markets of Su and Zhou, and even more possible markets in the future, it is urgent for Chu to increase its grain production.
Among them, the development of Xichuan Plain is the top priority.
However, if you want to develop Xichuan, you will naturally need manpower. The current population of Xichuan is far from enough to develop the entire Xichuan Plain.
Fortunately, a snowstorm last winter caused serious losses to people across Chu State, and even caused a large number of casualties.
But similarly, most of the people who were severely affected by the disaster were relatively poor and did not have many assets.
And these people are precisely the best immigrant population selected by the imperial court.
So after a snowstorm, the poor people at the bottom who lost a lot of property simply gritted their teeth and stamped their feet after accepting the government's invitation for relief, and chose to participate in the recruitment and immigrate to Xichuan.
According to the data reported by the Ministry of Household Affairs, there are now about 50,000 households and more than 200,000 disaster-stricken people in various parts of the Chu State. They have accepted immigrants. At this time, they are being dispatched to Xichuan County under the coordination of local governments.
And this number is just the beginning.
As work continues, more people will choose to immigrate.
Within this year, the imperial court will be able to immigrate at least 100,000 households and more than 500,000 people to Xichuan County.
At the strategic meeting for the next few years two years ago, the immigration target to Xichuan County in the next six years set was extremely expected to be completed within this year and next.
It seems that a snowstorm is not entirely a bad thing, it still has some positive effects.
No matter what, once 500,000 people arrive in Xichuan, the entire Xichuan Plain can almost be initially developed.
By next year at most, Xichuan County will become an important grain-producing area in Chu State.
